164 The Unity of the Organism 



ter, when we come to it, will lead us to see that the essence 

 of Wilson's criticism of Schwann relative to cells, quoted 

 above, will now have to be applied to himself relative to 

 chromosomes : "This conception expresses only part of the 

 truth, and Schwann went too far in denying the influence 

 of the totality of the organism upon the local activities of 

 the cells," said Wilson in 1900. Now we shall have to say 

 that Wilson goes too far in denying, by implication, the 

 influence of the totality of the organism in determining sex; 

 for the assumption that the x-chromosome is "responsible 

 for sex," and that the facts are "simply and completely ac- 

 counted for" by this assumption surely involves this impli- 

 cation. 



Driesch's views touching the relation of the organism to 

 its constituent elements generally are very important, and 

 will have to be considered under several heads. We have 

 already referred to his proposal to purge the cell- theory of 

 all that is hypothetical in it. Continuing the previous quota- 

 tion, we have this : " . . . attempts to conceive the organ- 

 ism as a mere aggregate of cells have proved to be wrong. 

 It is the whole that uses the cells, ... or that mav not 

 use them." ^- His much discussed theory of "equipotential 

 morphogenic system" had its inception, as is well known, in 

 his study of the blastomeres in early embryonic development. 

 At present, I go no further than to point out that while it 

 seems certain to Driesch that the "organism as a whole" 

 is essentially implicated in some fashion in producing organic 

 structure, it also seems certain to him that he knows nothing- 

 significant about the nature of that implication. He says: 

 "So all we know about the proper stimuli of restrictions is 

 far from resting on any valid grounds at all ; let us not 

 forget that we are here on the uncertain ground of what 

 may be called the newest and most up-to-date branch of 

 the physiology of form. No doubt there will be something 

 discovered some day, and the idea of the 'whole' in organi- 



